VinGroup and Li-Cycle assess new plant plan

recycled.

Fortum said the facility in Harjavalta will reduce Europe’s dependency on imported battery raw materials.

Head of the batteries business line at Fortum Battery Recycling, Tero Holländer, said the “low-CO2 plant can sustainably produce the materials urgently needed for new EV lithium ion and industrial-use batteries”.

The plant is already producing nickel and cobalt sulfates, Fortum said.

Recycling pre-treatment services for the Finnish plant will be conducted around 2,400km away at Fortum’s new operation in Kirchardt, Germany, The company said on March 16 it had received its environmental permit for Kirchardt from regulators.

Campine posts record figures after take-over

European metals recycling and speciality chemicals group Campine posted a record performance for 2022 on March 13 including increased sales of more than €317 million ($335 million) — less than a year after acquiring two lead battery recycling plants from French lead recycler Recyclex.

The Belgium-based group reported full-year Ebitda (earnings before interest tax debt and amortization) of €26.6 million and saying it had become Europe’s second largest lead-acid battery reprocessing company.

Ebitda was up 18% compared to €22.6 million achieved a year earlier. This comprised €17.2 million from its Belgian operations and €1.8 million from the French ones together with a one-time positive non-cash effect of €7.6 million.

Campine reported total consolidated revenue of €317.4 million, including six months of revenue of the ac- quired French plants, which was an increase of more than 40% compared to 2021.

Campine said the revenue was related to increased material/metal prices as the volumes remained almost equal.

The battery breaker activities in France are hosted in a new recycled batteries business unit. Campine’s C2P recycling company has become its recycled polymers unit.

“With the expansion, we now recycle a volume of 180,000 tonnes of used batteries, which is the equivalent of 10 million car batteries per year,” said division director David Wijmans.

Wijmans said the group also expanded its feedstock and is now collecting batteries from a broader region.

CEO Wim De Vos said: “There is a clear consolidation in Europe with some temporary and definite lead metal production plant closures, which currently creates a relative shortage of lead metal in Europe.

Vietnam’s Vingroup and Canada’s Li-Cycle are assessing proposals to build a lithium ion recycling plant in Vietnam, the companies revealed on April 12.

The plant could be built near battery manufacturing facilities operated by Vingroup’s VinES Energy Solutions subsidiary, under an agreement where Li-Cycle would become VinES’ preferred recycling partner for its Vietnamese-sourced battery materials from 2024.

The move came five months after the firms agreed an international battery recycling partnership.

Separately, on April 10, VinES said it was joining forces with Turkey’s Altinay Elektromobilite to produce advanced batter- ies as part of a full-service business for energy storage and mobility systems in the Turkish market.

Altinay general manager Mert Uygun said the partners also aimed to attract investment from the domestic energy sector.

VinES will offer the technology, system design, production and verification of the ESS units, while Altinay will head up sales and marketing as well as after-sales services in the Turkish market, Uygun said.

In November 2022, Vingroup auto subsidiary VinFast agreed to expand cooperation with China’s Contemporary Amperex Technology to develop battery systems for the EVs market.

Gravita makes first moves into Middle East

Gravita India is to invest in the construction of a lead batteries recycling plant in Oman — its first in the Middle East, the company announced on February 24.

Gravita Netherlands, its subsidiary, has agreed a memorandum of understanding for the project in which it will hold a 50% stake, with the remainder held by undisclosed Omanbased partners.

The plant, to be designed and developed in India, will be managed by GNBV and have an initial, first-phase battery recycling capacity, of 6,000 tonnes per annum.

Gravita said the total investment for the first phase was around Rs40 crore ($5 million) of which GNBV’s share of investment would be around Rs20 crore.

The company has yet to disclose the location of the plant or comment on further development phases.

Gravita operates similar recycling facilities in Togo,

Senegal, Ghana, Mozambique, Tanzania and Sri Lanka in addition to India.

CEO Yogesh Malhotra revealed in August 2022 that the company was eyeing opportunities to further expand its operations outside India.

Battery recycling investment in the Middle East has gathered pace since March last year, when Italian group Seri Industrial said ground had been broken for a combined lead acid battery manufacturing plant and recycling facility in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

The company behind the Dubai Industrial City project — Dubatt Battery Recycling — is a joint venture between Dubai-based Regency Group and Seashore Group. Dubatt is investing AED110 million (about $30 million) in the project.

In August, Royal Gulf Industries said it would invest more than AED62 million to build a lead batteries recycling centre in the UAE.